Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act June 1930

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Tariff
tariff /tarif/ Noun A tax or duty to be paid on a particular class of imports or exports. Verb Fix the price of (something) according to a tariff. Synonyms rate - duty - charge - price list

Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of June 1930 raised U.S. tariffs to historically high levels. The original intention behind the legislation was to increase the protection given to domestic farmers against foreign agricultural imports. Massive expansion in the agricultural production outside of the U.S. led to massive agricultural overproduction during the 1920s. This in turn led to declining farm prices during the second half of the decade in the U.S. During the 1928 election campaign, Republican presidential candidate Herbert Hoover pledged to help the beleaguered farmer by, among other things, raising tariff levels on agricultural products. But due to the What about us? from other industries, soon a bill meant to provide relief for farmers became a means to raise tariffs in all sectors of the economy. When the dust had settled, Congress had agreed to raise tariff to the highest level ever in U.S. History.

How does it relate to the Great Depression?

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was more a consequence of the onset of the Great Depression than an initial cause. But while the tariff might not have caused the Depression, it certainly did not make it any better. It provoked a storm of foreign retaliatory measures Overall, world trade declined by some 66% between 1929 and 1934. More generally, Smoot-Hawley did nothing to foster trust and cooperation among nations in either the political or economic realm during a perilous era in international relations.

This is interestingWhere can I read more?

Barry Eichengreen. "The Political Economy of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff," Research in Economic History, 12 (1989), pp. 1-43. Douglas A. Irwin. "From Smoot-Hawley to Reciprocal Trade Agreements: Changing the Course of U.S. Trade Policy in the 1930s, Michael D. Bordo, Claudia Goldin, and Eugene N. White, Editors, The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Charles P. Kindleberger. The World in Depression, 1929-1939 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973). Peter Temin. Lessons from the Great Depression: The Lionel Robbins Lectures for 1989 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1989).